Unknown Stories

Performance costumes have long been a distinctive way to visualize explicit and implicit cultural and social hierarchies, as well as to identify characters on stage. Stereotypical characters representing different ethnicities were familiar in Finland by the end of the nineteenth century, established with the help of instantly recognizable costumes and make-up, often premised by an internalized racism inherent to historical practices of costume design. This article focuses on the representation of ethnicity and especially racialized characters on the Finnish stage through the study of extant costumes and, in particular, a case study of two surviving “Lapp character” costumes in the artefact collection of the Theatre Museum in Finland in Helsinki, which houses objects considered worthy of preservation and representative of Finnish theatre history. By focusing on a previously unexplored type of costume, it is possible to propose new ways by which to enhance the visibility of marginalized perspectives in the museum collection.